2 COMMENTS

So I take it you’re one of the news outlets that Fife say are “wholly inaccurate”. Not for the first time, in my experience. Do you guys fact check before you publish? you know, that “journalism” thing that should be done … 😉

If you read the story carefully, you’ll see that it shows we did try to check before publishing.

The information was provided by a reliable emergency service source who was in an excellent position to know.

We asked Fife Constabulary to comment on the report that the officer had accidentally sprayed himself.

As you can see from our report above, the force refused to make any comment about this.

In such circumstances, many organisations will take the opportunity to give journalists an off the record “steer” away from a story they believe not to be true. This was not done.

Fife police, about two hours later, then put out a press release about the incident in which they confirmed that CS spray had been used. Even then, they did not take the opportunity to deny or even steer away from the suggestion the officer had sprayed himself.

We are aware that Fife police have complained to the newspapers that ran the story but as I write this on Monday, November 19 – four days after the story was published – Deadline has not received any direct, formal complaint from the force.

If this story is inaccurate, our position is that the police force missed at least two clear opportunities to deny it or – at the very least – warn that there was some doubt.

It’s in the nature of the news business that journalists cannot always wait for hours, days or even weeks for absolute truth to emerge, assuming any such thing exists. If we did, you’d get your newspaper once a year.

It’s a two-way street. We do our very best to check stories and for every one that goes out at least one is spiked because it doesn’t “stand up”. In that process, we heavily rely on organisations such as the police to provide timely and reliable guidance.